HomeTag Archives: Constitution of the United States

Tag Archives: Constitution of the United States

Garland Gets a Lump of Coal; So Does the Perception of SCOTUS

The United States presidential election of 2016 will be analyzed for decades if not centuries. Most of that analysis will concentrate on the two candidates, and their respective campaigns and supporters. But as far I am concerned, one of the greatest tragedies of the election was entirely attributable to the Republican-controlled Senate. I am speaking, of course, of the Chamber’s ...

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The Need for Doctrine: Scalian Originalism and Canadian Purposivism

A legal lion passed away recently. One might argue that the death of Justice Antonin Scalia means much more for the American legal audience than the Canadian one. After all, Scalia’s death tossed the Supreme Court of the United States into the centre of an already contentious election season and brought to the forefront the divisively partisan tendencies of the ...

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Federal Court Rules Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration is Unconstitutional

A District Court judge in Pennsylvania held that President Obama’s recent Executive Action on Immigration exceeds his executive authority and usurps the authority of Congress. The court cited President Obama’s previous speeches in which he stated that such Executive Action would violate the  separation of powers and the rule of law. On March 28, 2011, for example, Obama declared that “America is ...

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Contingency Fees and the Rule of Law

In today’s The Hill, Professor Lester Brickman discusses the class action lawsuit brought against BP in respect of the 2010 oil spill. Professor Brickman argues that the BP suit is representative of a larger trend in American class action litigation whereby the plaintiffs’ lawyers are hired on a contingency fee basis and end up reaping enormous sums from the settlement. ...

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More MPs Means Fewer Trained Seals

This article originally appeared in Huffington Post Canada   When the Conservatives were in opposition, they frequently chastised the governing Liberals for ruling their backbencher MPs with an iron fist. Most if not all votes were whipped, which meant that, in a majority government, the position of the Prime Minister and his inner Cabinet invariably became the law of the ...

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